Part-time Indian?

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is an autobiographical book written by Alexie Sherman in 2007. The book is about a child, whose name is Arnold Spirit, as well as known Junior, he lives in the Spokane Indian Reservation.

Because of some events that take place during the book, he wants to move from the School Reservation to a public high school located in Reardan, Washington.

The book has a lot of themes in which we can focus on more, but the one that I want to highlight is race and how is it developed in the novel. 

When Arnold decided to move from the school reservation to the all-white public high school, and he starts to travel every day he said something that totally called my attention, “Traveling between Reardan and Wellpinit, between the little white town and the reservation, I always felt like a stranger, I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other, it was like being Indian was my job, but it was only a part-time job” (Sherman, 2007).  Here we can see that Arnold’s point of view is in controversy, because he feels himself stranger in both places, in the reservation and in Reardan, I personally believe that his identity is changing every day, because he has to fight against bullying in the reservation, poverty, alcoholism, poor education, the lack of opportunities and on the other hand in Reardan he has to fight against stereotypes (he as an Indian boy, his talents, etc.)

According to the fact that I decided to talk about, this novel stereotypes a lot about how a white person looks like and how an Indian does. For instance the fact that is highly evident about race is the sport mascot of the Reardan School; Junior realizes that he and the mascot were the only Indians at school, and for me that was an image that we can infer from the message of racism, despite that, Junior has the power, the character, the strength to make friends with white boys from the new school, highlighting his intelligence and his naïve nature.  

All in all, the novel calls my attention in a lot of terms, the way Alexie developed bullying through cartoons, the alcoholism that were immerse in the reservation, the desire to become someone important in life, how some minimum details became some important facts during the novel, for instance when Junior hit the professor and the discovery of junior mother’s book, the novel starts to play the game, they are the most important events in the novel.

What about if Alexie had not move from the reservation to Reardan? ... Interesting...